Kaufman’s “OPEN HOUSE” Offers a Reflective Workshop

Representative Jay Kaufman’s award winning public policy forum, “OPEN HOUSE,” holds a special personal growth and enrichment session with “Immunity to Change: The Difficulty of Changing and Effecting Change.” The forum, the fifth of the 23rd season, will be held Wednesday, January 24th,from 7:00PM-8:30PM at the historic Depot in Lexington Center (13 Depot Square in Lexington Center).

This month’s “OPEN HOUSE” represents a side trip from the usual explorations of policy and politics. Mark Twain famously offered that “I’m all for progress; it’s change I can’t stand.” For all the talk of change, it’s hard to achieve! Just think of all those failed New Year’s resolutions or diet and exercise programs. What does it take to change and to effect change? Even when we are committed to change – especially in such cases – what stands in the way?

Those are the questions that animate the “Immunity to Change” exercise developed by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Their workshop invites us to explore the roots of our own hidden competing commitments to change. It offers insights not only into what makes changes so difficult for us as individuals but also what it means for those in politics and public life trying to mobilize a community for something other than business-as-usual. Real leadership to effect positive change is rare, in part because most of us fail to understand what it means and what it takes to move people to a new place.

Come to the January “OPEN HOUSE” to experience the “Immunity to Change” workshop. Find out for yourself what stands in the way of your efforts to change. You’ll leave with new insights and with a protocol for continuing the work of identifying and addressing your immunity. And together we’ll have a chance to enhance our skills as change agents to address the fundamental challenges that are all about us as a community, Commonwealth and country.

Because of the personal nature of the exercise, we will not be taping this session for broadcast. We are so grateful for LexMedia’s partnership on “OPEN HOUSE” but know there are times to turn the cameras off. The workshop will start promptly at 7PM and no one will be admitted after we begin.

In 1997, OPEN HOUSE was awarded the prestigious Beacon Award, cable television’s equivalent of an Emmy. The series was also named the best television series by Massachusetts Cable Television Commission. The OPEN HOUSE series is produced through a partnership between Representative Kaufman and LexMedia which records the forums for broadcast in Lexington and Woburn.

Notable Quotes

We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever did.

Margaret Mead

Your elected representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment... and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Edmund Burke

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

Pastor Martin Niemoller

Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.

Cornel West

Other people see things and say: 'why?' But I dream things that never were and say 'why not?'

G.B. Shaw

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.